Our Verdict

With a spacious cooking area and power-packed burners, the Stansport Outdoor is a great stove option whether you have a tabletop or need to be freestanding. Its simplicity in design allows for easy post-meal cleaning and care, as well as efficient and straightforward set-up. The two 35,000 BTU burners were the most powerful in our review, making this stove more than robust enough for countless cookouts with friends and family. However it struggles with the wind a bit due to the lack of a windscreen and does not come equipped with an auto-ignitor, so you'll need to make sure you remember your lighter or matches. And, while we think this is a fine stove, the almost-identical Camp Chef Explorer 2-Burner is $50 cheaper and performed better across all the most heavily weighted metrics in our review.

Compare to Similar Products

Our Analysis and Test Results

The Outdoor Stove by Stansport is fantastic for large cookware and big groups. It has a simple, durable design and the removable legs allow it to be used either freestanding or on a tabletop or tailgate. The powerful burners pack a punch, but the open design and lack of windscreen meant we had to re-light the burner whenever a breeze was present, and there's no auto-ignitor to help expedite the process.

Performance Comparison

Big pans and woks love this stove!

Time to Boil

This stove boasts a whopping 70,000 total BTUs, more than any other model in our review. However, throughout our testing process, we felt that other stoves with less BTUs performed more powerfully and consistently. We know that wind is a factor, as the Stansport does not have a windscreen, but we even found this to be true on calm, non-windy days.

We kept aware of the fact that, on large propane tanks, there is a regulator with a safety mechanism that will engage if you turn the gas on too fast. This safety will keep the BTUs lower than they would normally be. It is unclear whether the particular Stansport we tested had some issue or if the BTUs the manufacturer claims this stove has are slightly inflated. And, to be fair, if we weren't directly comparing this stove to others we likely never would have noticed anything off. This is still a very powerful set-up with an impressive flame. It boiled a quart of cold tap water in 4:15 - not the fastest of our test suite, but still a very decent time.

Wind Resistance

Most of the stoves that lacked a windscreen ended up near the bottom of the pack for overall performance. Wind resistance plays such a huge role in boil time and simmering ability, and thus the entire cooking experience. However, this model still fared decently overall, mostly due to the sheer size and force of its burners.

That said, the Stansport Outdoor struggled with the wind. With no windscreen and so much space between the flame and the cooking surface, there are a lot of areas for wind to infiltrate. This stove comes equipped with an oxygen regulator to help adjust the flame when it's windy, but we saw a minimal benefit to this in most applications. During our box fan test where we set up a fan 24 inches to the side of the stove while boiling a quart of water, this stove took 9:30 to boil. For comparison, our winner for this test, the Camp Chef Everest, took a mere 3 minutes.

This Stansport Outdoor struggled with wind resistance, easily going out with even a slight breeze present.

Simmering Ability

This stove did adequately with simmering and low cooking but wasn't the best. The low setting is still pretty high, which didn't come as a huge surprise considering it has 5.5" wide burners (the largest of any stove we tested). The main issue we had was that it was easy to turn the flame off by accidentally going too low. This was made exponentially worse when a breeze was present.

Simmering a pot of rice on a breezy day, we had to relight the burner twice, which requires moving your pot and relighting the burner with a lighter as there is no auto-ignition system. It was hard for us to feel fully confident when simmering, and our testers were constantly checking the flame to see if it was still lit. Our favorite stoves for simmering were more compact and wind-resistant models such as our Editors' Choice, the Camp Chef Everest.

Ease of Set Up

Despite the size of this stove, it was very easy to set up. While much heavier than all the compact stoves, this contender is still 17 pounds lighter than our Top Pick for Group Cooking, the 47 pound Camp Chef Pro 60X. At 30 pounds, the Stansport is noticeably more manageable to lug around and requires only screwing the legs into place and attaching the fuel hose to be ready to go. And if you're setting up on a table or tailgate, you don't need to bother with the legs at all, making the whole process that much more straightforward.

Despite the large size of this stove, it was refreshingly easy to set up.

Ease of Care

This was one of our top picks for ease of care due to its open and airy design. Most of the other stoves we tested have a drip tray of some kind under the burners that naturally collects dropped food bits. With this stove, anything you spill will simply fall through to the ground (which could be seen as a pro or a con depending on what environment you are in). Additionally, this model is completely painted black, so it just doesn't show dirt and grime as easily. The only complaint we had concerning the paint job was that for quite a while the stove off-gassed some nasty smelling chemicals as it burned through the initial layers of paint. Definitely not pleasant when preparing food, but also something that we understand is temporary. We would recommend running the burners on full blast without food for a bit when the stove is new to help mitigate this.

A bird's eye view of the Stansport Outdoor shows the open design and why we love this stove for ease of care.

Portability

This model measures 30.75 x 15.75 x 6.75 inches with the legs removed. While it's not nearly as cumbersome as the Camp Chef Pro 60X, it's still a very large stove and you will need to be able to accommodate both the stove and a large propane tank in your vehicle and at your campsite. But, if you're planning to cook for a large group, this is arguably a completely reasonable and desirable trade-off.

Cooking with this stove is much like cooking on a professional gas range indoors with tons of room and lots of flame adjustability.

Best Applications

The Stansport Outdoor is best for large groups and serious meals. The burners are huge and very conducive to high heat, large cookware, and food in large volume. So, if you regularly find giant pots of soup or huge pans of stir fry at your campsite, this may be a great option for you. It's also a great stove to consider if you need an outdoor kitchen for things like canning or beer-making, though simmering on a breezy day was a bit touch and go. If you want the versatility of also being able to use small cookware, you may want to consider a different stove with a more compact top grate. Small vessels either don't fit at all or topple over, so you will need a pot that's at least 6.5" wide. And, if boiling water quickly at all times is a priority, having something like a JetBoil on hand as well is a smart idea.

The large grates on the burners of this stove mean you can't go too small with your cookware. This 6.5" pot fits, but if it gets shifted just a little bit it will fall through.

Value

When we originally reviewed this stove toward the end of 2016, its list price was $151, making it a pretty great value. With the jump in price to $191, this stove is still a decent value, but it's also $50 more than the Camp Chef Explorer 2-Burner which is almost identical and performed better in several of our tests. Regardless, this Stansport still feels like a practical choice for someone who needs to cook for large groups with confidence, so if you find it on sale for a price that feels fair, we say go for it.

Conclusion

This is a nice stove under $200. It has a sturdy design and cooks quickly and professionally. If you are someone that regularly cooks for a lot of people and your cookware tends to be large and burly, this is a great stove to consider purchasing. It's easy to set up and even easier to keep clean. Be prepared to be on your toes if there's a lot of wind and you're trying to simmer something though, as this was one area of weakness we did experience. Also of note is the height of this stove, several of our taller testers felt that the cooking surface was awkwardly low when set up on the legs.

Height was a bit of an issue that reviewers noticed with this stove. Standing only 28.5 inches high, it felt low for some of us.